said: "I will see you to-night?"

"Yes," replied Raikes promptly. "I will be there."

"Very well; I will not return until the time appointed," said the Sepoy.
"I expect to show you a rarity."

"Another brilliant aggravation?" asked Raikes.

"Ah!" laughed the Sepoy, "is that your estimation of the sapphire?"

"Yes," returned Raikes with acid frankness. "To be permitted to
appropriate the gleam and the radiance; to comprehend the cunning of the
facets; to appraise its magnificent bulk intelligently, and witness the
careless possession by another of all these beatitudes, I think that
constitutes an aggravation."

"It has been known to degenerate into a temptation," continued the
Sepoy, reflecting the cynical humor of the other.

"Aye!" admitted Raikes, "and has concluded in surrender."

With this the strangely assorted trio left the table directly, the Sepoy
to his problematical business, the spinster to escape the reprimand
foreshadowed in the eyes of her brother, and Raikes to keep his
treasures under malicious surveillance.

All that day his diseased mind tortured itself with impossible theories
and absurd speculations, until his attempts to explain the curious
substitution degenerated into a perfect chaos of despair and
bewilderment.

With an impatience he could not explain, Raikes at last presented
himself at the apartment of the Sepoy as the hour of ten was striking.

He was greeted by the curious individual within with a demeanor which
somehow offended Raikes with the impression that his prompt eagerness
was the subject of amused calculation.

His irritation, however, was not permitted to develop, for no sooner had
he seated himself in the chair indicated by his host than the latter
placed upon the table, within easy reach of his harassed visitor, a
small box of leather and directed him to press the spring.

Anticipating something of the nature of the contents of the case from
the material of which it was made, Raikes, forgetting for the moment the
futility of the day's researches, pressed his bony thumb upon the
spring, and at once the lid flew back like a protest, disclosing the
most superb diamond it had ever been his misfortune to see and not
possess.

"Ah!" he cried in an ecstasy of tantalized contemplation, "the glass,
the glass! Anything so precious must have had commensurate treatment.
What color, what clarity, what bulk!" and as the unhappy creature
yielded to that species of intoxication w